Category: The Eternal Alchemist

Chapter 2

Charlotte left the marketplace, spotting a trolley stopped on its rails taking on passengers. She hurried over, holding to the strap of her satchel, and stepped up into the cramped compartment, brushing past passengers who stood, holding onto leather handholds hanging from the roof. Men and women filled every crevice of the trolley and Charlotte had to shove her way past two arguing men. She finally spotted an empty seat near the center.

Funny enough, this is actually two separate paragraphs in the print version, but is a single paragraph in the Kindle version.

The main question here, though, is what is Sauron’s princess doing on public transit? It’s hopefully not an “I just love to mingle with the commonfolk” thing, considering the neighbor she ends up with:

A slumbering man in a worn, filthy suit lay beside her. He cradled a bottle of Dresht Rum in his arms as he slumped over the seat, snoring like a starved mist-hound.

And it’s not like this book can’t be judged by its cover. Dude tries to grope her later on, something that provokes no reaction at all from Charlotte, so apparently this Stalker that’s following her around either has a mandate to only intervene if Charlotte faces some kind of existential danger or else it’s just asleep at the wheel.

Continue reading “The Immortal Cure: Immortal Incest Sauron” →

Our author today is CJ Olsen, whose previous work on Amazon is almost entirely non-fiction stuff, which is almost entirely about the LDs church, because Utah. He sold me a copy of the book at the Salt Lake Comic Con, and since I have no idea if it’ll be any good, I figured it fit well into the whole “let’s find out how good this book is together” theme I have going on this blog. The book also came with a free bookmark, which, like, I didn’t realize people still did that. I thought we’d reached the point where the idea that free bookmarks aren’t really effective in advertising your book had reached total saturation. It’s right up there with “begging book stores to let you host a signing” on the list of cliche things authors do to feel more successful that don’t actually help. I guess I just read ebooks so often these days that it doesn’t come up.

I think if CJ Olsen ever reads these blog posts, he might regret selling me a book.

Prologue

That’s never a good sign.

People following these as they come out will be aware that this came out a couple of days late. I bring this up because the fact that this prologue has kind of a boring opener definitely isn’t the reason why it’s late. It’s late because my Sunday video was late, and my schedule slipped from there. But this book does have an opening line that could’ve used some more workshopping:

The cool morning breeze blew through a narrow canyon ruffling light green weeds protruding from the hillside.

Hold onto your hats, this book has light green weeds in it. I’m compelled to read on.

The first line of the second paragraph gets us to the part of the scene we care about:

A bulky airship rested anchored close to the canyon’s side, its slightly rusted, dull iron exterior a sharp contrast to the naturally formed rock to which it was tethered.

Nothing about this airship leaps out as particularly special among airships or anything, but there’s an audience for “this book has airships in it” in a way there is not for “this book has weeds in it.”

Continue reading “The Immortal Cure: Sauron’s Princess Saves A Cat” →